Fairfield’s Bonkers cupcakes brings joy to owner and customers
FAIRFIELD — A new business dealing in sweet treats is a passion project born from the pandemic.
Kris Stevens said he and his son, Mike Stevens, started Bonkers Cupcakes while they were at home during the pandemic discussing jobs that would make themselves and others happy.
“We just started talking about doing something new,” he said. “We’ve been enthusiastic bakers for many years. So we cooked up the idea to do Bonkers Cupcakes while we were in lockdown.”
Bonkers Cupcakes, located at 1618 Post Rd, had its grand opening on Wednesday, and Stevens said business is going great. For people stopping by, he said the coffee buttercream on chocolate cake cupcake is his personal favorite.
“I think our chocolate cake is really special, but the coffee and chocolate together, there’s just something about it that makes me very enthusiastic,” he said. “I have to try and stay away from those puppies.”
Stevens said he is the owner of a software company, while his son is trained in physics and computer programming. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, his company sold off its main product.
“I kind of thought I was retired,” he said. “But it turned out I was really, really bad at being retired. I have lots of excess energy. I was mowing my lawn four times a week and looking for stuff to do.”
Corporate jobs are not that fun, Stevens said, and he and his son started the business as a way to start doing something more fulfilling.
“Something a little gratifying, where you go home at the end of the day and say, ‘Hey, that was great,”’ he said.
Stevens said cupcakes and pies are the main products of the shop, but the business will also have a rotating selection of goodies — like cream puffs and cookies. He said they also roast their own coffee.
Cupcakes are the main product, Stevens said, because he and his son primarily imagined Bonkers to be a delivery business, and cupcakes are durable.
In fact, Stevens said part of the Bonkers Cupcakes business model is the Bonkers car — a vehicle filled with cupcakes that roams around the area and can be summoned on their app. He said the car will be on a different circuit every night.
“Kind of like an ice cream truck, but with technology,” he said. “We’ll have boxes and boxes of fresh cupcakes in the car that you can grab in the evening hours when the sugar urge hits.”
Stevens said the response he has been getting from the community has been humbling so far. During the soft opening on March 16, he said, organic word-of-mouth buzz brought people to the store.
“By the second day, we completely sold out,” he said. “We thought, ‘We can’t let that happen again.’ So, on Friday, we made a whole lot more and we almost sold out of those. On Saturday, we made way, way, way more and we still sold out. Business has been going up from there.”
Stevens said the grand opening was their best day by far. He said the feedback from social media has been fantastic.
“It’s kind of humbling, because we’re having a great time making the cupcakes, and so if we can have a great time making cupcakes and make people happy, that’s really all I want from life at this point,” he said. “Kids jumping up and down in here and being enthusiastic is about the highlight of my career. If I an make great cupcakes and make people happy, I’ll do that for as long as I can stand.”